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POLITICO 44

Flanked by screens showing the outline of a jetliner, Romney flew into the Lowcountry today to launch his campaign here by talking labor policy and taking aim at the National Labor Relations Board and its lawsuit against Boeing.

Both Romney and Pawlenty toured Boeing’s new manufacturing plant here, the plant that triggered the board’s action. At issue is whether Boeing illegally weakened unions in Washington state by choosing South Carolina – a right to work state – for the plant.

Romney accused Obama of putting "labor stooges on the NLRB to pursue a political payback strategy," a claim that drew his first applause from the audience.

About 100 people attended Romney’s remarks at North Charleston City Hall, his first campaign appearance here since formally entering the 2012 presidential race.

The audience, a mix of long-time Republicans and tea party types, filled about half the seats in the council chamber. S.C. Treasurer Curtis Loftis also showed up and mingled with the crowd.

Romney is scheduled to travel to Florida later today for a CNN-Tea Party debate with other GOP presidential hopefuls.

Robert Behre is a reporter for the Charleston Post and Courier. The Charleston Post and Courier is partnering with POLITICO to cover the 2012 presidential elections.

Who cares what Romey thinks about unions since as a Wall St. corporate "greed is good" raider laying off or firing workers was the first order of business to increase profitability of a destressed company? Apparently, he is like the previous Republican presidents who politicized the National Labor Relations Board (designed to protect union workers' rights) and rendered it worthless along with consumer protections, the EPA, OSHA, EEO, FDA, etc.

Boeing screwed itself by publically stating and in print that the SC plant was being opened up to avoid union contracts and union workers at its plants in Seattle, Washington. In short, it was a direct violation of the labor law and a direct challenge to the NLRB. Apparently, they got cocky or complacent after eight years of anti-union abuse under Republicans.

Considering that historically Republicans have NEVER represented the working class and Romney, worth $300 million or so, is hardly a working class guy and is a farce to continue to portray himself as a regular guy. Just as the GOP use gay marriage as a wedge issue in North Carolina, why be surprised that Romney would use unions in a newly-created hot button issue.

It is no surprise that the "solid south" of Democrats went solidly Republican after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act. Republicans took over the Southern racist bigot vote which fit in nicely with their lack of concern for people other than themselves or those that may not look or talk like they do.

Unions only represent eight percent of the private sector workforce. Yet it was progressives, Democrats, and unionists (who suffered and died for workers' rights) that gave us the employment benefits we take for granted or the "social safety net" of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid that the Republicans have opposed and have tried to kill outright or to profit by through privatization.

Unions remain the largest member organizations representing the working class in America while, thanks to Republicans, 80% of income growth over the last 20 years went to the top one percent. The average CEO of the Fortune 500 makes $10.6 million per year or 400 times the average worker (up from 40 times the average worker in the 1970s) or more than all the union leadership salaries from top to bottom.

Notice that the Republicans keep the working class distracted, manipulated, and exploited while they pick their pockets or have them fighting among themselves over economic crumbs while the rich, who have robbed them regularly, get off scot-free like the Wall St. rich while continuing the GOP's top priority of maintaining their tax breaks and subsidies while cutting programs for the working class. In brief, they are morally bankrupt and Judgment Day cannot come soon enough.

At issue is whether Boeing illegally weakened unions in Washington state by choosing South Carolina – a right to work state – for the plant.

TeamPOLITICO: Sep. 12, 2011 - 12:14 PM EST

The audience, a mix of long-time Republicans and tea party types,

What's really at issue is that the Obama administration talks about corporations taking their business overseas out of one side of their mouths while thier minions attacker the nations' largest exporter...........all in the name of protecting the unions.

If they'll willing to tie up Boeing in costly and time-consuming litigation.......who won't they go after?

Let Romney do this type of crap in Washington, Kansas or Texas and see what reaction he gets ! Mitt is deliberately going after the labor unions and the pro-labor improvements that have finally instituted in DC the changes needed as a result of the Clinton and Bush labor policy's. Why he is going after what has been seen, and is going to be again, the core of the middle class, is beyond me. But if he keeps going this way, all he's going to do is to aggravate the already increasingly frustrated middle and working class to the point of a massive Democratic registration and voter turnout. And no amount of Tea Party nonsense or political hoop-la is gonna be able to keep it bottled up.

What's also interesting is something that no one has really talked about yet, that being the increasingly Tea Party and Republican led drives to make voter resgistration more difficult. Romney goes and try's to make the middle and working class voter's registration process tougher or more partisan in it's application, and it get's seen, every voter registration clerk in the country is gonna be working OVERTIME to try and keep up with the voter registration process. Even Palin saw this one coming. So did The Minnesota Mouth. Anyone wonder why they both are keeping their mouth's shut on this issue ? Look at Texas. Voting there, after the fire's, is gonna be all but impossible short of the Federal Elections Commission going down there and re-registering everybody in what ever type of district is left after the fire's swept thru. And I sure don't see Perry busting his yap over this either.

Maybe Bachmann had it right after all. Maybe God did start all of this up, just to show us who is gonna stand up when 'crunch time' rolls around. If I was Perry, I'd start seriously considering getting off my fat horse's butt and get back to Texas and start showing some serious leadership where it count's, not out on the news and rubber chicken circuit.

So, it’s OK for Wall Street Bankers to be in charge of creating our money supply (and then lending it to us AT UNTAXED INTEREST-) and along with them, for Bush Republicans to be in charge of Monetary Policy;

but it’s NOT OK for labor officials, or former labor officials, to be in charge of the NLRB?

(You wrote:) "Everything this administration has done is stacked AGAINST business, AGAINST the freemarket system."

PROOF? (Incidentally I would be OVERJOYED if a President would come out and admit publicly and in his legislative BEHAVIOR, that he was AGAINST BUSINESS - because "BUSINESS" is BY DEFINITION "AGAINST" THE INDIVIDUAL CITIZEN. Government is suppposed to exist -and indeed was expressly formed- to protect the individual AGAINST BUSINESS - not for the converse.)

BTW, Boeing is one of the chief culprits in ripping off the government, the treasury, the taxpayer, THE ECONOMY.